Jeff's friends are all very athletic. Their girlfriends are all very thin, graceful, and without visible bruises. As a result of their physical perfection, I try my best to not hang out with them very often. It's not that I want to be the finest catch in the room. I simply am afraid of falling down in front of them. (I’m at least seven years older than them, I have braces (on my teeth—not my legs), and the size of my jeans is double the size of theirs. For me to suffer a fall would provide material they could laugh at for years.)

A few days ago, one of Jeff's friends came over to watch the gold medal hockey game. I carefully positioned myself in a chair and joined them. The friend's cell phone rang. It was his girlfriend on the line, and she wanted to know if Jeff and I would want to join them for an evening movie. Being that we already had dinner plans, Jeff mentioned that we would need to see something after 7:00.

"I'll pull out the movie listings in the paper." I yelled, a bit too enthusiastically.

I jumped out of the chair and took a step with my left leg toward the paper. When I tried to follow up with my right leg, I found that my right foot had gotten caught in the left leg of my corduroy pants. This was it. I was falling. I caught myself by slapping the palms of both hands onto the hardwood floors. It was the loudest noise ever made in our apartment—followed by the darkest silence anyone could imagine.

I laughed the laugh of a suicidal eleven-year-old and frantically reached for the movie listings, hoping my impressive movie-listing-reading skills would erase my fall from the mind of Jeff's friend. Too late. The girlfriend had already located the paper.

"How about 7:35?" he asked, a bit too quietly.
"Fine with me." Jeff said, wondering why I was still on the floor.
"Great!" I said, picking the cat hairs off of my pants and hands as I gathered the courage to stand up and walk back to the chair...